Big Gator: A BBW shape shifter paranormal romance (8 page)

             “
I've
gotta see my babies!” she gasped.  “Please, you've got to
let me see them!”

             
She
was desperate. Brandy had to hold her back and take control of the
situation.

             
Shifter
moms were as protective as they were stressed-out, and new mothers
had real trouble leaving their brood in another woman's care. 

             
At
first they would want to show up day after day, but Marianne insisted
that they must stop.  The shifter community did not want to
arouse suspicions.  Any distraught woman showing up at a Gator
Rescue site day after day would at least cause local residents to
question her sanity (gossip spread fast in this county).

             “
You
know you can't come back until they shift for the first time,”
Brandy said.

             “
It's
not right!” Susan shouted. “It's not fair!  You don't know
what it's like to have to go through this!”

             “
No
I don't,” Brandy said. “You're right.  What you're going
through is awful, I can't even begin to imagine.  But we have
rules, and the rules protect all of us.  What do you think would
happen to your children if anyone outside the community found out
what was really going on here?”

             
Susan
started bawling like crazy, and now she was past the point of being
able to talk.  Brandy walked her to the main building, and they
sat outside at a picnic bench until Susan finally calmed down.

             “
This
is going the be the longest three years of my life,” she said.

             “
If
you can get through this,” Brandy assured her, “then you can get
through anything.”

             
Brandy
hugged her and comforted her until she was ready to accept the
situation.  When Susan stood up, she thanked Brandy, and then
she left.

             
Marianne
had watched the whole thing from a window.

             “
You
did good,” Marianne said.

             “
You
could have come out and helped!” Brandy said.

             “
You
totally had it under control.”

Chapter 9

             
Brandy
and Marianne lay out sunning themselves.  They had shifted and
were enjoying the sun in the patio area behind Ray's health club.

             
Ray
also had shifted and was sunning himself with them for a little
while.

             
When
Brandy had enough, she shifted back.  Ray admired the 30-second
view before she wrapped herself in a towel.  Marianne had pretty
much dozed off at this point.

             
Brandy
pulled a lounge chair over so she could still sit next to the other
two, and she pulled her smartphone out of her purse. Stretching out
on the lounge, she began to scroll through her contacts list. 
She had been calling kinfolk all week, letting them know she was
still alive. She found the number for her Aunt Josephine in New
Orleans, and gave her a call.  She hadn't spoken to her since
last Christmas, and now she had all these free minutes to use up
before she lost her primo calling plan.

             
Someone
picked up on the third ring.

             “
Aunt
Josephine?”

             “
Hold
on a sec,” someone said.  Now the voice sounded male, and
young.  That had to be her cousin Tim.

             “
Hello?”

             “
Aunt
Josephine, it's Brandy.”

             “
Brandy! 
Gosh, Sugar – how y'all been?”

             “
Okay
– not bad – I'm just calling to check in.  It's been
awhile.”

             “
That's
because you haven't returned my calls since after your brother's
funeral,” Josephine said.

             “
I
know,” Brandy said.  “I'm sorry about that.  I just
needed space.  I wasn't handling it very well.”

             “
That
wasn't something that
should
be
handled well,” her aunt said. “Someone so young as Charlie.”

             “
So
how's life in the Big Easy?”

             
Brandy's
aunt filled her in on the basic goings on with the Louisiana branch
of the Guyette family.  Times had been hard for them with
Hurricane Katrina years back, but they managed to pull their lives
back together slowly but surely. Before Charlie's death, a number of
Guyettes had finally moved back to the state after staying with
relatives throughout the Deep South.

             “
Oh,”
Aunt Josephine added. “You don't know yet, but your cousin Jenny
has a lead on the LaBelle family.”

             “
Uh
oh,” Brandy said.

             “
This
could be for real this time,” her aunt told her.

             
There
was a small contingent of Guyettes who still maintained a general
grudge against Madame Eve LaBelle and who never could accept their
shifter status.  They absolutely hated being gator shifters and
were always trying to hatch one plan after another to reverse the
curse.

             
Messing
around with Hoodoo, however, was decidedly risky business. Hoodoo, as
opposed to Voodoo, is a practical system that blends concepts and
spells drawn from three streams of folk magic: African, Native
American, and Anglo/Celtic. Truly, Hoodoo is a melting pot mixed
right here in the U.S., and it is not for the faint of heart. 
It involves unusual hexes and strange symbolic acts, and it can
involve using regular household implements in interesting ways.

             
According
to historical record, Hoodoo was a mere child in the South– less
than a decade old in its independent existence as a practical system
– when Eve LaBelle started turning everyone into alligators. 
So, she was an original, if not THE original, Hoodoo Queen.

             
Being
a shifter was not always easy, that's for sure.  Brandy
preferred it, though, because overall it gave her a better life than
if she were a normal human. She was less-than-the-ideal woman
according to American cultural expectations, but she was quite
desirable by alligator standards.  The reason she was single was
mostly choice. 

             
Brandy
needed a can-do man, one who would take charge and earn her respect;
but she was smart enough not to be fooled into accepting a Bad Boy
imitation of the Real Thing.  Unfortunately, the shifter
community was filled with true Bad Boys and not enough of the Real
Thing.  And, it was not remotely feasible for her to get
involved with a man who was not a shifter.  So, it was a
Catch-22.               
Brandy got leered at, flirted with, and pursued, but she had to keep
up a bitch shield and fend them all off. It was getting exhausting,
and even a little depressing.  Brandy was lonely and sick of
waking up in the morning all by herself in her bed.

             
Her
cousin Jenny and all the other self-loathing shifters believed that
if they managed to track down a true blood relative of Madame LaBelle
who also practiced Hoodoo at her level – meaning that this relative
actually 'had the gift' so to speak, being powerful on par with Eve
herself – then they could force that person to lift the curse.

             
The
fight within the Guyette family, however, revolved around the fact
that it was an all-or-nothing deal.  Either ALL the Guyettes and
ALL the other families would cease to be shifters, or NONE of them
would. Most Guyettes wanted to keep things the way they were. 
They liked being shifters, despite some major drawbacks.

             “
Jenny
thinks she has found someone out your way, actually,” Aunt
Josephine said.

             
Brandy
laughed.

             “
We've
been down this road before,” Brandy said. “LaBelle is a common
name, and most have no relation to Eve LaBelle.”

             
Madame
LaBelle hailed from Baton Rouge, the daughter of freed slaves who had
chosen their own surname. She was a bit French herself, being Creole,
but she was NOT part of the mainstream LaBelle family tree tied to
that region. Her first two husbands had disappeared under mysterious
circumstances, and some say that Eve LaBelle was barren and so she
could never have children.               
Others strongly disagreed over this last fact.

             
Marianne
was starting to stir awake. When she overheard Brandy's statement,
she lashed her tail.  Marianne immediately knew what was up, and
she didn't like it one bit.  She, too, had heard this story
before.  Marianne shifted back into human form, angrily putting
on her thong and her shorts and stretching on a tiny T-shirt over her
bra-less cleavage.  Marianne was pretty and genuinely likeable
enough that she made trashy look cute, even when she was pissed.

             
Ray
was enjoying himself.  This was the real reason he was hanging
out with them. He was a bit of a jerk, and he was always waiting for
the quick shift of a female to get a glimpse of something he liked. 
He preferred a woman who looked like Brandy, but more than once he
had propositioned the two of them for a threesome.

             “
What
the hell
?”
Marianne hissed, close to Brandy's ear.

             
Brandy
reached out and covered Marianne's mouth with her own hand. She shook
her head 'No' to make Marianne shut up.             

             “
You
know,” Josephine said.  “I never minded being a shifter
myself.  Although, we don't age well. Having dry skin when
you're young is one thing, but I wrinkled up fast in my 40s. 
Thank God for Dr. Renoux.  But all and all, it's been fun so
far.”

             
Dr.
Renoux was a plastic surgeon whose clients were all shifters. 
The Renoux, like the Guyettes, the McAlisters and the Cliburns were
among the cursed.  The remaining families included the Slaters
(Marianne's people), the Powells, and the Quackenbushes.

             
A
curse is like that,
Brandy
thought.
It
traps you because you make a deal with.  You get something out
of the situation, and so you're willing to go along with the bad as
long as there's a smidgen of good.  Then you become lazy about
trying to break free from it.

             
Life
could be good as a shifter.  For her it was exciting, and it
brought her respect and mobility. It kept things interesting and
distracted her from what otherwise would be a very boring, working
class life. The only downside was the chronic eczema, AND the risk of
being the mother of 20+ kids, AND the premature wrinkles.  If a
female shifter was vigilant about taking care of her skin and not
getting knocked up by some horny yee-haw, she could have a swingin'
time.

             
Life
could be great all the way up until your very last moments just
before you died, when the other shifters of your family had to eat
you alive.  Being the one eaten alive, however, wasn't always
the worst, since you would be on your deathbed anyway.  What was
horrible, is how many times you yourself had to be the cannibal and
eat your loved ones whom you weren't ready to let go of yet. 
Brandy had not ever expected to have to cannibalize her own brother
at such a young age.